Heretofore, it has been known to provide apparatuses for splitting the heads of animals to recover internal organs such as the brain and pituitary gland. For example, the brain of a hog is edible and the pituitary gland is useful in the production of insulin.
One type of device is the well known single station configuration including a stand on which the head is positioned and a vertically reciprocal knife or blade that descends onto the head and effects the splitting operation. One such device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,105,993 and which requires manual loading of the head and manual unloading of the split head. A similar type device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,052,769, although especially adapted for bovine livestock.
Another apparatus intended to provide greater production includes a single head-splitting station defined by a cabinet having a splitting knife and gates for completely closing the cabinet during the splitting operation. This type of device is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,890,673, which includes a movable bed or head support means indexed through the head-splitting cabinet. Because of the safety gate structure for closing the cabinet during each head-splitting operation and the necessity to index the bed when moving heads into and out of the splitting cabinet, a rather complex structure is provided that requires considerable maintenance and is incapable of high production.
Another apparatus heretofore known includes a rotary blade that is disposed above a conveyer and which requires movement of the conveyer head support relative to the rotatable blade during rotatable blade movement. This device, disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,414,708, while not known to ever having been manufactured, is believed to be unsatisfactory as initial contact of the head by the blade during movement of the conveyer can produce tilting of the head that would result in inaccurate splitting of the head and sometimes damaging of the internal organs.